Do you know how your brain works?
The more you know how your brain works, the easier it is to mold it for success.
Mental health plays such an important part in achieving goals and to me, there’s just not enough focus put on learning about the inner workings of our brains.
Achievement & success is almost all about your mindset and the right mindset requires self awareness of how you learn, cope, conquer fears, gain wisdom and create habits to help you get better at everything in your life.
Science has advanced so much in the understanding of how our brains function.
Recent discoveries about the brain
- The brain is plastic right up until old age, meaning you can mold it based on your thoughts and habits.
- New neuron growth occurs throughout life, meaning you can get better as you age with sustained practice.
- Neuroplastic states can be deliberately and carefully directed. This means you are in charge of your brain.
The more you know the better you get.
The phrase, “Neurons that fire together wire together” has been stuck in my head for over 5 years now.
I first heard the phrase in the movie “What the bleep do we know“. A documentary on what science has learned about our brains, the physical world and the consciousness of all living beings. One of the doctors interviewed in the movie was discussing how our brains function and in explaining how habits are formed at the neurological level he said this;
“Neurons that fire together wire together.”
It’s a simple phrase with a very deep meaning.
It means that when we turn on our brain to do anything like walk, talk, sing or write, we have the ability to wire our brain. The more we fire these neurons, the better we get at whatever it is we are doing.
Our thoughts and choices matter more than we know.
We all know choices are important but I didn’t really grasp this concept for many years.
Every little choice we make matters and plays a part in determining the path we will take in life.
Good or bad, it’s up to us to make the right choices, form healthy habits and live a happy, successful and fulfilling life.
The phrase “Neurons that fire together wire together”, can be attributed to Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuropsychologist, who wrote those words in 1949.
Hebb’s rule states:
“Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or “trace”) tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability.… When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.”[1]
In simple layman terms “Practice makes Perfect”.
Whether you are learning a new language or learning to write landing page copy, know that the more you fire those neural networks in the same pattern, the better you will get.
What to know more about this stuff?
Here’s a quick video that talks about neuroplasticity.
Related articles
- Love Your Hippocampus, Don’t Eat It (santitafarella.wordpress.com)
- Brain Speed: An Evolutionary Tradeoff (bigthink.com)
